Chapter 28
I loop my hands under Bowen’s armpits and heave, surprised that he isn’t heavier. He stands and wobbles. His eyes roll back in his head and his knees buckle, his limp weight pulling me down as he crumples on top of me.
Footsteps echo in the stairwell, a frantic, staccato pounding that matches my heart. I struggle to get free, but with the floor slick with blood, and Bowen as limp as a corpse, I can’t.
“I’m sorry. I’m too weak to move,” Bowen whispers.
Arrin sets the IV bag on the ground and helps get Bowen off me.
“We have to go, Fo,” she says. She grabs my wrist and pulls me to my feet. I look at Bowen, pallid and blood covered on the landing. “We have to leave him or we suffer a fate worse than a slow death!” She claws at me, digs her nails into my forearm, and pulls. I don’t budge. “He’s going to die, anyway! And he’d want you to save your own skin! Come on! I know a way into the tunnels if we can get to an elevator shaft.”
“No. You go. Save yourself.” I pick up the rifle and rest it on my shoulder, ready to fight.
“But he’s going to die!”
“I am not leaving him,” I say, looping my finger through the trigger. The footsteps are close. Bowen stirs, and his icy hand slides around my ankle.
“Arris is right. I’m going to die. Go. But Fo, I want you to know that I love you. I’ve always loved you.” His hand falls away limp against the floor.
“I won’t leave you,” I mutter. The stomping feet are so near I can feel their vibrations in the stairs. I firm my shoulders and take aim.
“It’s Tommy,” Bowen whispers. “Don’t shoot.”
Tommy comes around the corner and jerks to a stop. “Don’t shoot me!” he barks, his eyes wide, and I lower the gun. He runs to Bowen and drapes Bowen’s arm over his shoulders. “Fo, get his pack and put it on—leave yours. Then get the IV bag and hold it as high as you can. If we get fluid into him, he might live to see tonight. If we survive that long. Now come on. We’ve got to find somewhere to make a stand.” I nod and pick up the IV bag from the bottom step.
Tommy drags Bowen through the door to the thirteenth floor. I follow on their heels, IV bag held above my head, ultraheavy backpack pulling on my shoulders. Arrin is already gone. I never saw her leave.
As the door swings shut behind me, I hear the pounding of many feet coming up the stairs. Tommy pauses and presses something into the creases of the door. He spits on it, and it starts to fizz and smoke, tainting the air with an acidic, metallic smell and sealing the door shut.
“That’ll buy us a few more minutes,” Tommy says, turning down the hall.
We go into three different rooms before Tommy finds one he deems acceptable—one with a mattress for Bowen. He helps Bowen lie on the bed and hangs the nearly empty IV on the headboard above him. Next, Tommy opens his backpack and takes out grenades, ammunition, and two small guns.
“Where’d you learn to shoot?” he asks as he loads the guns.
“My father. He was in the air force when I was a kid—got disabled. He taught me how to shoot,” I say, surprised that many words find their way out of my numb body.
Tommy looks at me. “You still are a kid.” His words make me pause. For the first time since waking up in the wrong body, I feel older than I look. Ancient.
He hands me one of the small guns. “For when Bowen’s rifle runs out of ammo,” he explains.
I take the gun and tuck it into the waistband of my pants. “Why don’t we go out the window? Down the fire escape?” I ask, peering at the shattered window.
Tommy laughs, a cynical sound. “No fire escape out that window.”
“Then why don’t we go to another room? With a fire escape?”
“Because,” Bowen answers, voice strained, “there is no fire escape. And if we go out a window, they’ll get us. They’re circling the building.”
“Oh. How many are there?” I wonder aloud.
“At least fifty,” Bowen says, watching me with half-closed eyes.
The thud of feet climbing stairs echoes in the hall outside our room, and my jaw drops. “Fifty? And we’re going to try to fight them?” I turn to Tommy. “What if you and I die? What happens to Bowen?”
“He dies, too. Unless …” Tommy glances over his shoulder at Bowen and raises a thick black eyebrow.
“Dude! No,” Bowen snaps, a sudden fire in his glazed eyes.
“Unless what?” I ask, a flicker of hope stirring in me.
“Unless I call in—”
“Tommy, no,” Bowen says, his voice quivering, eyes frantic.
“Call in what?” I demand.
“Call in your location, Fiona Tarsis,” Tommy says, studying me. “If I do that, the entire militia will be here in less than five minutes and the gang will run or die. Bowen will get help. And they’ll take you to the lab.”
The lab, where I will become a human guinea pig. I look at Bowen, at his ashen face and blue lips. “Call in our position. Now,” I order Tommy. With those words, hope floods me, spills out through my eyes and trickles down my cheeks. I bite my bottom lip, savoring the feeling of hope when I thought all was lost.
“Fo.” Bowen pushes himself to sitting and sways. “We have a chance against the raiders! We might make it out of here!”
“Fifty against two? I don’t think so. If it means keeping you alive, I’ll go to the lab. And if I survive the lab, I’ll find you. I promise.”
Bowen’s mouth grows hard. “There is no surviving the lab. If you go in, you don’t come out. Why do you think I decided to risk running with you?” he says, his voice as icy cold as his eyes.
“I’ll come out. I promise!” I say, the hope of being rescued bleeding over into the hope that I will survive.
“No, you won’t,” Tommy says matter-of-factly, pointing his gun toward the door. “No one’s ever come out of the lab unless they’re in a body bag. You go to the lab, you forfeit your life.”
Something pops and bangs outside our room.
“They got through the door,” Tommy says, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “It’s only a matter of time now.”
Footsteps groan on the floor outside our door. And then the door crashes inward, and two guns jab inside. Tommy doesn’t hesitate. He lifts his gun and fires. One man falls into the room. “I found them,” the other yells from the hallway.
“Call. In. My. Location.” I say it through gritted teeth. “Now!”
Tommy looks at me and nods, pulls a walkie-talkie from his belt. “This is Tommy. I’ve found the female Ten. Fiona Tarsis. We’re—”
“Tommy, no!” Bowen wails.
“—on the thirteenth floor of the City Center Marriot. Surrounded by a gang of at least fifty.” He puts the walkie-talkie back on his belt and looks at Bowen. “Sorry, man.”
“Wait.” Bowen plucks the IV needle out of his arm and climbs to his feet. A hint of color lights his cheeks. “Wait. We have one other option.” He turns to me. “Did I hear Arris say there’s a way into the tunnels if we could get to the elevator shaft?”
I nod.
“There’s a way into the tunnels from here and you waited until now to bring this up?” Tommy bellows.
Bowen glares at Tommy. “Sorry. I’ve been kinda distracted. But the Fec said there’s a way into the tunnels through the elevator shaft. If we can pass the raiders and get there before the militia gets here …” Bowen wobbles over to my side and drapes his arm over my shoulder, leaning most of his weight onto me. “We might have a chance.”
I wrap my arm around him and press my face into his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he says against my hair.
“Wait.” Tommy holds up a hand and cocks his head. “Listen.”
The deep, low throb of a helicopter pulses in the air. Bowen and Tommy look at each other and one of Tommy’s eyebrows slowly lifts.
“They’re sending a copter for her? That means someone’s coming from inside the wall.” Tommy turns his dark eyes onto me. “Why are you so important?” he asks.
I don’t have an answer, but Bowen does. “She’s from the lab,” he says. His arm tightens on my shoulders, and he presses his chilled lips to my forehead. “Somehow she survived. And she’s a Ten, but she has no signs of changing.”
“I’m from the lab?” I say, staring at him.
“We don’t have time for this!” Tommy snaps, shooting a spray of bullets out the doorway. I flinch and my ears ring. “You’d better get your mask. Can you share with her?”
Bowen nods and pulls me closer, putting his lips against my ear. “Tommy’s going to drop a nerve-gas grenade. You can’t breathe the air, or you’ll have a mental breakdown,” he explains. “You’ll have to breathe through my mask. We’ll take turns.” He unzips the backpack, still on my back, and removes a palm-sized mask that only covers the mouth.
“When I say run, you two go to the elevator shaft and see if you can get it open. I’ll cover you,” Tommy says. He holds a pale-green grenade in his hand and then pulls the pin. He counts to five and tosses it out the door.
Bowen presses the mask to my mouth, and I take a breath that almost bursts my lungs. And then I hold it. The grenade pops and hisses, and slow tentacles of eerie greenish fog creep along the floor and into the hotel room. Outside the room, a man calls a warning, “Green Hell!” and then starts to scream.
“Run!” Tommy yells. I grab Bowen’s arm and hold it tight around my shoulders, pulling him toward the door. He takes the mask from my face and inhales a deep breath through it, then presses it against my mouth again. I gulp a breath of air and keep going.
The hall is filled with green smoke, making it hard to see more than a few feet in any direction. As we stumble toward the elevator shaft, we pass a man who is panting and clawing bloody tracks down his own neck. We pass another who is weeping and clutching his stomach. He reaches out and grabs my ankle, and I fall to the floor. Bowen falls with me, landing hard, with a whimper of pain. The mask comes off my face, and I hold my breath, struggling to get out from under Bowen as he reaches for the dropped mask.
I manage to put my feet beneath me and help Bowen to his. He presses the mask to my face with a trembling hand. I gasp air into my straining lungs, hand the mask back to Bowen, and we continue forward. We pass eight more men writhing on the floor, some of them crying, others talking gibberish.
And then the elevator comes into view, a sleek metal door covered with grimy fingerprints, open just wide enough for a small person to squeeze through. I peer through the gap and my hope falters. A narrow ledge leads to a metal ladder. There’s no way I can carry Bowen down that. I look at Bowen. His eyes meet mine, and he takes the mask from my mouth, pressing it to his and sucking in a breath of air. But the sorrow in his eyes tells me he knows what I’m thinking.
“Tommy will get you to the tunnels,” he says through the mask.
He puts the mask back on me. “I’m not leaving you here,” I say.
He shrugs and takes the mask from my mouth again, putting it back on his. “I’m not going to live much longer. You have to go without me.” He takes one more deep breath, a final breath, and places the mask back on my mouth. Tears fill my eyes—tears of frustration. Hopelessness.